Jac Naylor opened her eyes, her gaze immediately falling onto a poster of a smiling baby on the wall and making her wish that she had never woken up. Around her she could hear babies wailing, people sharing their congratulations, while she lay there on a bed in a stark private room completely empty. Her hand fell onto her stomach and her head to her right where she saw Joseph not even changed out of his bloody clothes dozing at her side. She winced as she saw how much blood she had lost and felt tears well up as she remembered what just hours ago had taken place. She couldn't believe that he was still there with her.
"Hey sleepyhead." He whispered, his voice raw with emotion. He shuffled on his chair closer to the bed and took her hand in his own. "How are you feeling?"
Jac just shook her head as tears streamed down her cheeks. She couldn't tear her eyes off the blood that was once part of her child, on his shirt.
Joseph followed her gaze and his face flashed red with anger.
"Oh God. Oh Jac I'm so sorry...I should've...but it was all so...they were in and out and asking me questions and I just didn't think. I'm so sorry." He growled letting go of her hand and ripping off his shirt in anger, throwing it to the floor and kicking the bedside table so hard that its contents crashed onto the floor. "Stupid....stupid..." He admonished, falling onto his knees as sobs overcame him.
"Joseph..." Jac whispered tearfully, reaching out a hand which he didn't take.
He knelt on his floor, his head in his hands as he cried. Jac wanted so much to comfort him but she was too tired to even move. She just held out her hand, willing him to take it, needing him to be there next to her.
"Joseph please...tell me what happened after...I can't remember anything..." She pleaded softly.
Joseph looked up at her with watery eyes. He took a deep breath and wiped them with the backs of his hands.
"Of course. I'm sorry." He told her, trying to compose himself as he walked to her bedside and perched on the side her bed.
"The baby? There was...a baby?" She asked him so quietly that he almost didn't hear her.
Joseph nodded, taking her hand in his own as it clutched the bed sheets and her knuckles began to turn white.
"I'm so sorry Jac....you'd lost so much blood. They had to do a D&C procedure to remove the rest of our child. There really was nothing that could be done. Your body had already begun to expel the foetus." He explained his voice breaking. "They were concerned that they'd need to do a hysterectomy. They asked if you would want that should the D&C be ineffective and the haemorrhaging continue. I said you wouldn't want that. Luckily everything went as well as could be expected." He told her, his voice trembling.
Jac nodded, unable to find the words.
"I want to go home." She told him in a small voice that was so uncharacteristic of her. "I can't bear to look at that poster. To see a baby smiling on there when ours is barely gone. I can't bear to be reminded of how defective I am."
Joseph stroked a piece of hair away from her tear stained face.
"Don't you dare say that. You are not defective. You don't deserve this Jac." He soothed.
"You would have agreed that I did not so long ago." She sniped and immediately regretted it as she saw the hurt on his face.
"Do you really think that I would wish this loss on you? I saw you with Daisha's son Joe. I saw you holding him. You want a family and you would have wanted our child."
"And what would you have wanted? Would you have stayed with Faye and not admitted it was yours? Or would you have been the doting daddy? And what about now? What happens now that I've lost our baby?" She asked him, anger she felt about the miscarriage bubbling up inside of her so much that she couldn't help but direct it at the person she least wanted to direct it to.
"Now we get back to normal. We grieve and we move on." He told her softly, looking at the floor.
"And you go back to Faye?" Jac asked him quietly, her hand trembling in his. "And we grieve in silence...apart..."
Joseph nodded. He felt so torn. He had taken vows but he knew that they weren't honest ones. Still he could not break them. Not even for her. No matter how much he wanted to now.
"Does she know? About the miscarriage?"
Joseph nodded, his eyes still not able to meet hers.
"Does she know the baby was yours?" Jac then asked.
Joseph met the question with silence and Jac could see a tear run down his cheek.
"So we pretend that the baby wasn't yours? You go on about your life pretending you feel nothing while the population of the hospital think I'm some kind of tragic slut who got herself knocked up by some stranger and then lost her illegitimate unborn child?"
"What do you want to happen Jac? I'm married to Faye. We were having a baby which should never even have been here but we lost it..."
Jac could feel the hurt and the anger building up inside her more and more as she questioned how he could continue to do this to her. How he could consider their child as something which never should have existed in the first place. The uncomfortableness in her stomach was a constant reminder of what she had been through and what she had lost, and she knew that there was no way she could just brush it under the carpet even if he could.
"Even if our child had lived nothing would have changed would it? You would never have admitted to being its father. I would have been a single mother living every day of my life knowing that the man I love didn't love me enough to be part of the family that we would have made." Jac snapped, wincing in pain from the procedure.
"Please...you're hurting yourself more..." Joseph pleaded, looking properly for the first time since she had woken up at the woman who lay in the bed on which he sat and realising he had never seen her so pained and fragile as she was after the loss of a baby she didn't even know she was carrying inside of her.
"What do you care Joseph? You're hurting me. This is hurting me..." She told him, her voice trembling as she motioned to the poster of the baby on the wall "and this...this is hurting me most of all." She admitted tearfully, looking at the hand which rested over her empty womb.
"Jac..." He whispered softly, his voice breaking. He reached out to touch her cheek but she flinched angrily.
"Don't touch me." She shouted. "Don't you ever touch me again as long as you're with her because we both know how little it means to you don't we?"
"I'm hurting too Jac." He admitted softly and for a moment he let the mask slip and Jac could see all of the emotion evident on his face.
"Yet you're going to leave me to do this alone and put the death of our unborn child to the back of your mind for the sake of a woman you admitted you have fallen out of love with? Our child doesn't deserve that....nor do I." Jac whispered softly. She turned away from him as tears streamed down her pale cheeks. "Please leave." She pleaded quietly.
Joseph didn't move. As much as he told her he had to stay with Faye it was the hardest thing in the world to try and get up and leave her, the same as it had been the morning after their child was conceived. It tore him apart. She was his other half, the person that completed him, not Faye but because of his anger toward her and his stubbornness he had taken vows that tied him to the woman who would always be second best. Vows he couldn't break.
"Go." She shouted, her shoulders shaking with sobs as Joseph did what he seemed to do best and left her alone with her tears.
